How to Find Motivation for Study

Finding motivation is really important when it comes to studying. Everyone’s happy to study if they feel like they want to. But it’s difficult to find motivation when you’re feeling burnt-out and tired. As the year goes on, sometimes finding motivation is harder than finding a needle in a haystack.

The first step with finding motivation when it feels out of reach is ensuring that you are maintaining healthy study habits:

Take good breaks during long study sessions. This means not looking at screens, moving your body, and keeping the time spent resting consistent. As much as the TikTok scroll sounds appealing, it will make locking back into focused study much harder.

As simple as it sounds; keeping your eating healthy and your water intake high will do wonders for your study. Think of your brain as a muscle, it functions best when it has good nutrients and plenty of hydration!

Do your best to study during the day so you are getting natural light and sleeping well! Sleep is your biggest friend when it comes to healthy information retention, so try and schedule shorter sessions in the evening.

Another way to keep study habits healthy is by using structured resources. Tools like SnapRevise’s summary notes, flashcards, and planners give you ready-made frameworks so you can focus your energy on learning, not just organising.

Next, don’t be afraid to reward yourself:

Motivation comes easier via positive reinforcement (reward) rather than negative reinforcement (punishment). Studying out of fear of failure rarely leads to good results. Instead, when you approach revision with positive goals, like progress, you build healthier habits and get better outcomes.

Rewards can be really simple, suited to your preferences/schedule and should be chosen to match the complexity/difficulty of the task.

Rewards could be going for a walk, watching an episode of your favourite TV show, going out for a sweet treat or anything in between!

If you are struggling on your own, work with friends:

Working with a larger group can ease stress and tension, ensure you are kept accountable in completing tasks and can offer more active and engaging study techniques to stave off boredom, such as testing each other!

Utilising interactive resources like flashcards can be a great way to make studying more enjoyable and engaging in a group. Testing others, and being able to explain concepts to them, is a great way to solidify your understanding.

Big tasks can be overwhelming, so break them down:

This technique is called chunking, and involves breaking a big task/goal/assignment into smaller more manageable pieces. One of its big advantages is that it makes study feel less intimidating, reducing procrastination.

Once you begin completing tasks, your brain is more likely to fall into a rhythm, benefitting from the endorphin release experienced when a goal is achieved.

With lowered stress and procrastination, the quality of your work will improve also!

The easiest step of all; the to-do list:

Being able to clearly see the tasks you have already completed can do wonders for your motivation.

It demonstrates your capability, which can reduce stress/panic.